In general, tap water is supplied to each district of a city through a water main after being purified at the water purification plant, and in each district, tap water is supplied to blocks, such as a medium block, a small block, and so on.
Further, in a house, a built-up area of commercial buildings, and the like, tap water is supplied to an end user through a small pipe connected to the water main buried under the road. Here, the small pipe is referred to as ‘a branch line’, and most cases of water leakage occur in the branch line. The branch line extends from the outside to the inside of a building, wherein the indoor and the outdoor are distinguished based on a water meter.
However, in terms of management of the water pipe, the outdoor pipe is managed by a water service provider (in Korea, a local government), and the indoor pipe is managed by a user (a house owner). Accordingly, when leakage occurs outdoors, the water service provider is responsible, but when leakage occurs indoors, the user (the house owner) is liable for charges related water loss.
To solve this problem, various technologies for detecting water leaks by installing a leak detector in the water pipe have been developed and applied, but the conventional leak detector is configured only to detect leakage, and not to identify whether the leakage location is indoor or outdoor. As a result, in order to identify whether the leakage location is indoors or outdoors, a related public official or the like should visit the site to check and deal with the leak. In other words, the conventional leak detector is inefficient in that in the case of an indoor leakage, the related public official is only able to notify the building owner of the indoor leak and tell to building owner to repair it. However, the related public official should still travel to the site for this simple checking and notification.
Further, to solve above mentioned problems, there has been proposed a leak detector for detecting leakage and a leakage location by detecting leakage of water and tracking a location of the leakage, but it is problematic because the detector has a complex configuration, it is difficult to install, it is expensive, and frequent breakdown may occur.
Further, in a current system, a meter reader reads each water meter and reports (inputs) the meter display information to a management department, whereby the management department charges rates based on the meter display information input by the meter reader, but it is problematic in that it is impossible to identify whether the meter reader has actually read each water meter, or has arbitrarily input the meter display information.